The body blocking meta has been around for a while, especially in situations where xenomorphs over extend to fight. Warrior, Crusher, Lurker, Runner, and Ravager all do this and similarly get punished for overextending by a single marine who didn’t move out of their way.
In my own opinion, this is meta gaming. The marine knows the xeno cant move past them if they stay on harm intent, and with them there the xeno will likely die or be severely injured should the marine not fall down and let them pass.
From a lore prospective, this wouldn’t happen. Regardless of intent, unless the marine is straight up suicidal or insane, they would not move in front of a ravager to block its path so they can secure the kill.
Thusly I suggest a ruling or game mechanic, simply put. Stop fucking standing Infront of xenomorphs trying to flee or otherwise move to a different location.
Perhaps all xenos (maybe T2+?) should be able to trample (like temporarily move the marine out of the way or make them fall down for a moment) or otherwise push the marine away to save itself. Only logical that a xenomorph with ALOT MORE WEIGHT TO IT THAN A MARINE should be able to EASILY push down a marine for a moment so it can flee.
Or if its mechanically challenging, just add a ruling to metagaming where it includes this. It would still ruin the round because a marine decided to stand in front of a ravager to prevent them escaping effectively but it will give the ravager some piece of mind that they shouldn’t have done that.
TL/DR: Add a ruling to metagaming which includes this or the ability to temporarily push down a marine in the event a T2+ xeno is attempting to flee. In which the marine Body Blocks them to secure the kill which would not happen in any sense of the conflict.
But who knows, maybe its intentional. What do you think?
Xenos can push marines by walking into them. Marines can’t push Xenos. A xeno moving a marine is slower than normal moving because it clears the tile ahead of you first. I’m sure you’ve seen a runner walk into an unaware marine pushing them away quickly.
Any meta ruling change would in practice be unenforceable, firstly because being walked into does not generate logs if I remember right, and secondly there are many reasons to be behind your enemy.
Gameplay wise, marines having some dominion over their tiles is important, you don’t want Xenos easily shuffling past marines to cause FF and attack wounded or medics healing wounded.
I feel like body blocking is a very dangerous thing for a marine, firstly because it puts them in melee range of a xeno, and secondly because it puts them on the wrong side of a xeno, away from his squad mates where a second xeno could grab him.
Nobody cares. It literally doesn’t matter, the amount of people who will gladly die with a smile on their face and gloat about it in dchat is…well a lot. Most marines will die without hesitation to bb a xeno. They know they can get revived, the rav won’t be. It’s not a risk, it’s an honor.
Enforcing this rulewise would be impossible
Just implement the TG mechanic where xenos can shuffle past marines
Cause I do agree private unga singlehandedly blocking a 15ft queen doesn’t make sense.
This post is the literal definition of a skill issue. Xenos have abilities that allow them to fuck up any marine if they so wished to do so especially in melee, any xenomorph that dies from being body blocked is a xenomorph that OVER EXTENDED like you’ve said so many times. Any xenomorph that overextends SHOULD be punished, but what you’re trying to do here is let people who make such a mistake be let go free by punishing the people who capitulated on it? Extremely fucking pathetic. This is the exact behavior of a normal SS13 antag player, uses up all their TC on equipment and guns but they never think about how they can escape a situation when confronted and 90% of the time end up being gunned down, in CM terms, a xenomorph goes out of a choke and starts murdering everyone by spamming all of their abilities but then one smart marine goes in the way and steps between the choke and the xenomorph and gets it killed.
What I’m trying to say is, in a tl;dr way: Play smart and you won’t get body blocked. Play dumb and you get body blocked.
From the little I’ve played on TGMC, xenos shuffling marines is very bad, you can shuffle a marine so that they’re cut off from the other marines and then just push him into the entire xeno force which just kills him with zero counterplay.
This change should be added to the charger crusher at the very least, a marine can kill a charger crusher by just standing.
For the other xenos it’s a skill issue as they shouldn’t be over extending this much.
I’m gonna be totally honest and say that while of course its not 100% realistic for marines to use their body to block xenos its not really an issue at all.
From a RP sense it does feel a bit strange that marines walk into their death sometimes to try something like this, but xenomorphs walk into lines of gunfire/fire/explosions all the time. And that is also something that a xenomorph probably should at least be hesitant to do.
We are playing a video game. A warrior is allowed to know that it can lunge into fire to grab a marines since it’ll be patted out after retreating. And a marine is allowed to know that they’ll probably get revived if they try to bodyblock xenos in a sensible location.
I also get that it can be frustrating to be caught out by a marine but my best response to that is change your playstyle.
Every caste that is at risk of being bodyblocked has abilities to deal with the person blocking them. The only exception to this would be the hedgehog ravager, but their abilities also punish bodyblocking without moving the bodyblocking marine out of the way so eeeeh probably fine.
Anyways TLDR: While bodyblocking isnt 100% milsim friendly it doesnt break RP too much and is just a risk reward kinda thing. If as a xeno you find yourself getting frustrated with getting bodyblocked all the time start saving stuff like fling, pounces or other similar abilities to deal with people trying to block you.
Also btw charger crushers have like 2 abilities to deal with people bodyblocking them. They can tumble to either move out the way or to bap a marine out of their way and they can use “Ram” to fling someone away. (I could also swear that the stomp gives a ministun knocking folks down, meaning you can move through them, but I might be making that up I cant remember.) Its just that usually these abilities get used offensively to deal damage instead of as escape mechanisms.
We shouldn’t have rulings forbidding things that are a normal part of gameplay. Even if you’re not intending to you can end up accidentally body blocking a xeno just by trying to get close and PB them.
In my opinion gameplay rulings should generally only be for weird niche things that players are unlikely to naturally do, like walling off corpses as xeno or metarushing hive as survivor.
Anyone talking about realism in a 20 years old engine based game of pixelated characters moving in tiles to click other sprites is genuinely out of this world and I congratulate you on your achievements. Body blocking as said above is NOT logical or realistic but of all other things, THIS is the hill you are willing to die on???
As a moderator, enforcing this would be nearly impossible. Downright stupid even. The rule around marines shooting eachother when dragged is already difficult, this would be worse.
